Farce of TPPA secrecy must end

The secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has become farcical, says University of Auckland Professor Jane Kelsey. Trade Minister Tim Groser says we just have to trust what hes telling us. In todays interview with TVNZs …10 October 2015

‘The secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has become farcical’, says University of Auckland Professor Jane Kelsey. ‘Trade Minister Tim Groser says we just have to trust what he’s telling us. In today’s interview with TVNZ’s The Nation he showed why we cannot.’

Minister Groser gave the tobacco exception to investor-state dispute settlement as an example of why Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations had to be kept secret.

“… to give you an example – practical example – one of the things we’re very pleased about, and it only came together at the last minute, is this whole exception for tobacco control measures from this very controversial ISDS, this disputes settlement form. I can almost guarantee you that if we had made that public, we would not have got it. Big Tobacco in the United States has got hundreds of millions of dollars to campaign. If they had known what was at stake, for sure they would have gone in to senators and to congress offices. I don’t think Froman would have been allowed to do that.”

‘The claim is utter nonsense’, according to Professor Kelsey.

The US’s limited exception to investor-state dispute settlement is a weak alternative to the comprehensive carveout for tobacco that Malaysia had proposed. The USTR had expected to table it earlier, but put off formally doing so until the last minute.

‘The decision to delay its formal presentation was highly political, but it had nothing to do with the US not showing its hand to the lobbyists as the Minister claims’, Professor Kelsey observed. ‘They already knew exactly what was going on.’

The following sample of reports show the US proposal has been known publicly for months and was the subject of intense discussions between the Obama administration and both the US tobacco industry and tobacco control groups:

• Could Tobacco Carveout Kill TPP? (2 September 2015): [Reuters reported the administration had been considering allowing tobacco to be carved out of the investor-state dispute settlement, which, among other things, would give tobacco companies little protection against stiff regulation by trade partners, like Australia’s ban on branded cigarette packs.]

‘Nor will the supposed “secrecy” protect the deal from political pressure. Pro-tobacco members of Congress have further opportunities to oppose the exception as the TPPA moves through the US political process, and are already threatening to do so’, according to Professor Kelsey.

‘Significantly the rationale the Minister gave for keeping the details secret is to protect the deal from those who might want to influence the outcome, not the formal explanations he has given about the need to protect negotiating positions from premature disclosure to other parties’.

‘The Minister has been caught out on something we do have the evidence about. If he is spinning this example, we should expect he is spinning lots of other aspects of the deal that we can’t yet disprove. He should publish the text now or stop peddling his version until the text does become available.’
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